I think Blizzard has decided that these "max level areas" are better off without flying. And it's hard to argue with that. Isle of Thunder and Timeless Isle were the best max level areas in the expansion.

Then add to that a new PvP zone, which traditionally does not allow flying, and a problem begins to emerge. If Blizzard allows flight in WoD, they have to sequester off the new max level areas. They can't use the main area of the continent. Instead we'll get something like:

So I think Blizzard is at something of an impasse here if they want to avoid this. Either make substandard max level areas that allow flying or disallow flying on the new continent. Disallowing flying will make a lot of people very unhappy in the immediate term.

I think Blizzard's best strategy would be to say that there will be no flying until 6.3. Then in 6.1 and 6.2, they can use the continent for max level areas. In 6.3 and up, they can make new content be on the islands of no flying, and allow you to fly in the old max level areas.

Giving a definite time after which flying will resume will quiet the fears that flying will be taken away. It probably won't stop the complaints, but I think that most people will be willing to settle down and wait for it.

2 comments:

I think it's unlikely that they will disallow flying completely. I get the impression that it's considerably more effort to make a "flyable" world than a "non-flyable" one. I doubt that they designed Draenor as the latter from the start, so why let all that work go to waste afterwards by limiting people to the ground forever?

I agree that their new ground-bound areas have generally been more interesting than areas where you can fly, but that's an issue of design as much as anything else. I remember in Burning Crusade there were all these dangers that could kill you in areas where they expected you to fly a lot (monstrous kaliri, fel cannons etc.) - you bet that wasn't boring. But then they slowly seemed to forget about their own ability to make movement through the air interesting too...

One thing about flying is that it allows a player to make the MMO equivalent of a surgical strike: get in, hit the target, and get out with minimal damage. When Blizz wants you to fight your way through a battleground --in effect, removing the surgical strike-- they disallow flying. When they want you to to a ton of things every day (/cough dailies /cough) they allow flying in the zone.